


Woven of Dust and Starlight

by Cherith



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-27
Updated: 2012-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-04 09:49:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherith/pseuds/Cherith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of Teza Surana, a girl that's lived in Kinloch Tower nearly all her life (at least as long as she can remember) and all she ever wanted was to be free.  Trying to help her friend propels her into a kind of freedom, one she's not sure she wants.  By then, it's too late to change her mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Trouble Inside and Out

**Author's Note:**

> This story is currently unfinished and has a multitude of chapters planned. Also worth nothing that Teza is not a character that I played through Origins, though her story is based there. 
> 
> I want to thank a good friend (she knows who she is) for letting me borrow some of her spirit to bring Teza to life. Thanks are also due to [seimaisin](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin) and [Taffia](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Taffia) for beta reading for me.

When the nights were their darkest and the moon and stars were hidden from view, she tried to remember the first time she had seen the stars from the tower windows.  No matter how long she tried, the memory would never come.   In the years that came after, there were times too numerous to count and she had long since stopped trying.  
  
At five, Teza had climbed atop another girl's bed to so she could reach one of the small windows and stare out into the night.  The air had been cool and the breeze on her face felt like freedom.  But when she stared out too long the empty night started to look like a black abyss that she could fall into at any moment and she had quickly scrambled back inside for fear of toppling in.  
  
Something about all her life in the Kinloch tower still felt like that, even more than a decade later.  As though at any moment she might fall out of that window and tumble down into the silent darkness, crashing beneath the still waters that lay below.    
  
One of the Enchanters told her that she had shown up on the docks just across Lake Calenhad as a toddler, old enough to walk and talk, but little more.  They didn’t know for sure how old she was and nothing had been left with her that would tell them.  Only three things were certain to them: that her name was Teza - as it was of the only things she could say clearly, that her pointed ears clearly hinted at her parentage, and that the tiny sparks that emanated from her fingers when she clapped excitedly said exactly why she had been left for them.  
  
She had been far too young to remember any of that.  They celebrated the day of her arrival as the day of her birth, not that there was much celebrating involved for anything in the tower.  And it was really only important to her in that it marked the passing of the days and the weeks and the years she spent waiting for a different life to begin.  
  
Kids as young as Teza were rare in the tower, so when she was six and a young girl with dark skin and a mop of curly hair showed up that was just her age, they became quick friends.  Jeanne knew her family, could pass letters to them if the templars let her, and she remembered bits of her life at home.  Some nights they would lay in one of their bunks, toes pressed to toes with heads at opposite ends, and Jeanne would recount her memories.  Teza thought when Jeanne recited them all, one after the other, that her voice sounded like a chant or a prayer the templars repeated in the chapel; things said out of love and reverence. It was as though Jeanne thought if she said them often enough, faithfully enough, one day she would get to go home again.  
  
When they were eight, she and Jeanne helped each other up to the ledge just inside one of the large windows high up in the tower. They opened it, but sat just inside and watched the rain as the wind turned it sideways and drove it past the tower in thick sheets.  She fell in love with the the rain then, with Jeanne's dark hand held in hers, and both of them laughing when the wind changed and drove the rain inside soaking their robes completely.    
  
Teza found she loved nearly everything about the rain, the way it sounded against the tower’s walls, as though it might break each stone down into pieces so small there was nothing left to keep anyone within.  The way the sky turned dark and grey and menacing was a reminder that there was a world somewhere beyond the tower walls where other people lived, and like her, they too could be drenched from head to toe if they stood outside too long.  The rain could beat against her skin, the sensation not unlike the tingle of magic that sizzled underneath each time she readied a spell; it evened her out, trouble inside and out.  
  
It wasn’t that they meant to make trouble, she and Jeanne, but invariably they found themselves in it: exploring parts of the tower forbidden to the children, searching the kitchen for snacks after mealtimes, in the library reading spells that were far more advanced what any pair of eight year old girls should be capable of.  So yes, the rain knew her, and she it.  The bright flashes of lightning through the sky were nothing different than the sparks that still came from her hands when she was too excited to remember control.  And the booms of thunder were the hammer beats of her heart on the days she feared would be the day the templars took her and branded a sunburst on her forehead.    
  
Then the rain would come again to wash away her fears.  It would be quiet at first, small drops beading on tan skin when she stuck her arms out open windows.  She would press her face near the glass and inhale the breeze that brought her smells from other parts of Ferelden.  If she closed her eyes and remembered her lessons and the brightly colored maps tacked to the walls of First Enchanter Irving’s office, she thought she could place each scent.  Rich pine from the forests sent by peoples that looked like her, but that she’d never seen and likely never would.  The tang of metal and coins exchanged in cities in every direction, places full of people that were free to come and go in the sunshine as they pleased.  Earth and stone from the stout dwarves near the Frostbacks.  She had never seen a mountain before, but like the rain, she knew the snow too, and supposed she might like it there very much.  
  
It wasn’t a girlish dream that she clung to, imaging the day she might escape the tower. For the teachers and templars had already instructed her she couldn’t trust her dreams.  But she hoped.  Hoped that one day, the templars might trust her enough to let her out into the garden to pick a flower or that she could wander free through the hallways and the gardens, or swim in the lake somewhere far, far below her feet.  Hope was her version of Jeanne’s litany of memories from home.  Hope was her fuel, her fire, like the sparks under her skin and the rain that leaked in from badly sealed windows.  Hope that she was more than just Teza, the elven girl locked in the stone tower.


	2. A Dwindling Resource

By the time Teza was thirteen, she realized there were many lessons to be learned in the tower, but very few of them had anything to do with the things the Enchanters thought they were teaching.  Some were merely a matter of numbers: that she could count on one hand the apprentices that had lived in the tower for as many years as she had, that there were far fewer elven mages than human ones, and the number of apprentices that knew their families outside the tower were disappointingly few.  It wasn’t just that the circle disapproved of continuing communication between parents and their children of the tower, but that so many of them had been given over to the templars or chantries, or simply, like she, been left for someone to discover.     
  
Other lessons were more abstract but the knowledge of them burrowed so far down inside her, that Teza knew she could never forget them: how difficult it was to control her emotions and by extension, her magic; that no matter who she was, what she knew, or how long she lived in the tower, humans would always treat her like a “knife-eared” slave; and that there were far worse things a templar could do than take one’s mind away.    
  
Teza was exhausted by the tower, of its stone walls and still, blue lake and the world beyond its shores that didn’t even know she existed. It wasn’t that she fancied herself anything special, or that could think of a reason why anyone might want to know she was there.  The silence from the world beyond the lake was deafening and expansive and like the dark abyss of night she saw from the windows.  If she let herself focus on it, she would fall into it and could not climb back out.     
  
Jeanne told her that she had to stop thinking about what lay for them beyond the tower.  She would hold Teza’s hand like when they had been young, and held her gaze as though Jeanne could pass her strength between them.  It was of another of the many lessons Teza had learned: how to nod and smile, even at her best friend, and say that everything was alright when it wasn’t.  For all the things the tower had taught her, she had no words to explain how much the darkness in her own mind frightened her.   
  
Teza went to her lessons and followed the templars orders.  She tried to stop thinking about anything on the other side of the stone walls, kept away from the other students for fear of saying something to attract the templar’s attentions and hoped that eventually everyone, Jeanne included, would stop noticing her altogether.  Teza became convinced that it would be better for everyone, most especially Jeanne, if people forgot about her.     
  
Despite her better efforts, many of the human apprentices continued to take notice of her.  When they were kind, it was the days they tweaked her ears or pulled her hair. It earned them nothing but the camaraderie of the other kids, uncertain glances and grateful sighs from the other elven apprentices that it was her and not them, and the occasional raised eyebrow of an overly attentive instructor.  Jeanne’s efforts to distract them, only garnered her similar attention and eventually drove a wedge between them that, in addition to Teza’s obsessions with the weather and escape, was too difficult to recover from.   
  
Just after her thirteenth nameday, a new apprentice: mousy, dark-haired boy named Jowan, asked Teza caught her between classes, and asked why she never fought the other students when they were cruel.  His voice was soft and timid, and he held his hands clasped nervously at his waist as they walked through the hallway.  If it was a joke, Teza couldn’t find a sign of it on his face, and she looked at him in surprise.     
  
When she looked away, he continued,  “You’re an apprentice too.  One of the Second Enchanters would surely put a stop to them if you said something.”   
  
Teza had no response to give him other than pursed lips and a half-hearted shrug.  A lifetime in the tower had not convinced the other apprentices that she was like them, and she was certain that nothing would.  If that meant getting her ears pulled or her braids tacked to the backs of chairs, she would learn to live with that, just as she had learned to survive without sunlight, stuck between a circle of unbroken stone.  When Jowan didn’t ask again, but didn’t leave her side, she walked with her head bowed to avoid the remaining questions in his eyes.   
  
After one of the worst storms of the summer, one of the older boys snuck out of the tower.   He was brought back to the tower in chains by hulking templars she didn't recognize.  The boy’s face was covered in dirt, streaked with tears and he wore the remnants of a tattered robe over a stained tunic and trousers.  His head hung down as he was paraded through the halls to the First Enchanter’s office.  It was Jowan and not Jeanne that found her after, sliding a hand into hers and squeezing until she stopped shaking.  When she tried to find out more, where he had gone, or what he had seen, it was Jowan that told her the boy had been given a job in one of the storerooms near the kitchen, and a sunburst blazed on his forehead.     
  
Any hope of leaving Kinloch Hold that Teza had left became a dwindling resource.


	3. A Tilted Axis

It was unclear when she and Jowan actually became friends. The change between them came so gradually, hidden in those tiny moments she recognized as something separate from life in the tower, that she never noticed it happening. But it did happen, and the further she grew from Jeanne, the closer she drew to Jowan, huddled together in abandoned corners of the library pouring over history books, maps, anything with a connection to the outside world. He never told her how ridiculous her ideas were, how the sound of rain on stone would never sound like the tremble of magic under skin, or how her ache for freedom could never be sated. He indulged her in a way that she craved, that she could revel in and the weight of circle walls retreated just a little.

By the time they were sixteen, it was clear there was something between them, something that spanned a greater distance than friendship. He kissed her once, late at night when the tower was quiet, and they were stealing back to their rooms from a late night of studies. It was quick; the moment passing with the same fumbling intensity with which it had begun. Jowan had muttered a flustered apology and excused himself in a hurry. Teza couldn’t think that it had felt anything other than strange and awkward, and in the morning when Jowan avoided talking about it, she was relieved. 

If it had felt the same for him- borne of heightened emotions and misplaced affection- she understood, but she never questioned him about it. It was safer for them both that way and what settled between them after that kiss was something familiar but not intimate, something almost familial and it seemed to suit the both of them just fine. 

The act and idea of it though, a stolen kiss with its warmth, close breath and hands, stirred something inside her. It wasn’t the need of a girl looking for freedom, her hours of imagination and study with Jowan were more than enough for that. Yet there was a fire, a spark that set her world on a tilted axis and had her thoughts torn between freedom and the angles of the faces of mage and templar alike; fascinated by the curl of a hand, the flutter of lashes in concentration, or the graceful curve of a waist. It wasn’t the consuming desire of escape, but the slow, persistent gnawing of something that said to her- there might be a different kind of retreat to be found inside the tower. Before long, Teza found her attention diverted, drawn to someone exactly opposite of everything she wanted.

Mages and templars were not encouraged to be anything other than cordial in passing, friendships seemed too lofty a goal and anything more than that, disastrous. There had always been rumours- rumors of an Enchanter and the man that was now the grizzled and terse Knight Commander, when they had both been young and new to their posts. It seemed unthinkable to imagine either of them breaking the rules, least of all, a rule with such dangerous consequences; that a mage would have placed her trust or her heart in the hands of a templar. But one only needed to see the glimpse of longing between them if they passed in the halls to see the space between them that love might once have filled.

There was almost a sort of safety in the idea. Were she to fall to her more base instincts, to the magic in her veins or the _desires_ in her heart, who better to have at her side than a templar? 

Still the danger was more present in her mind. It was one of the first lessons a mage learned in the tower: templars were just as likely to harm as to help. They too were locked away from the outside world, trusted because there was no other option, and as constrained by their faith as the mages were by fear. If there was middle ground to be found between oppression and trust, responsibility and faith, it seemed the wisest of them as First Enchanter and Knight Commander, had found only tenuous footing at best. If they couldn’t find it, that didn’t bode well for the rest of them.

Teza was good with secrets and knew well the way a need could haunt her very core until it was all she could do to keep it within the confines of her skin. It was good then, when she had more to keep- when there were striking blue eyes and the flash of a templar’s sword in her dreams- that she was well prepared. Preparation did not keep her from glancing in his direction as often as her self-control allowed, or from noting the times she was positive he had held her gaze longer than necessary. If a smile passed between them or if her mind wandered away with ideas of the other things his lips might do, she hid them away in her pocket of secrets - another thing only she knew how to keep safe.

He was not so much older than her, a year, maybe two. And when he spoke to her the first time it was only a simple greeting, a whispered hello constrained by chapel walls. Teza’s mind, like it did with all things, turned that greeting- a simple word- over and over in her head. The word tumbled around until it felt like something tangible, a thing she could hold in her hands, a thing she felt responsible for, a thing that trusted her.

For as much time as they spent together, Jowan was slow to notice where her attentions were drawn, his own affections pulled elsewhere. But eventually, notice he did. Teza, not knowing how to quantify her feelings for the templar with the curly blonde hair and the bashful glances, let Jowan tell her how bad the entire idea was.

"Teza. You can't. He... can't. It's not smart." He pulled her hand onto his lap and threaded his fingers between hers and gave her a look full of such fear she vowed that nothing could ever happen.

"It's only... it’s nothing, Jowan. I wouldn't... I won’t." 

For the first time, her eyes locked with Jowan’s and her hand in his, she lied.


	4. Potential for Destruction

She lied.   
  
In the moment, she had been sincere.  She wanted nothing more than to keep her promise to Jowan, to keep her eyes on him and say,  _yes. Yes, she would keep this promise_ .   She had been no intention of breaking the rules, drawing attention to herself, or of pursuing any relationship with anyone, least of all a templar.   
  
Teza had been alone for so long: alone inside herself, with her wishes and dreams of the outside world; alone in the tower where only if she was very clever and very lucky would she be allowed to live out all of her years; alone even amongst her friends.  She didn’t feel very worthy of anyone’s attentions.  She didn’t feel very worthy of much.  Her promise should have been the easiest one ever to keep.   
  
Jowan had nodded as though he believed her and left her alone in the chapel, alone with her prayers.   
  
When she prayed, it wasn’t because she was look for some sort of absolution or guidance.  She felt repentant in everything she did, most especially for wanting more, when it was very obvious the Maker had made sure she could have very little.  Even her magic felt weak; she was meant to be weak.     
  
And what was stronger than a templar?   
  
That’s what they were all supposed to believe.  That faith, the Maker, and the Templars were stronger than a mage’s magic.   That magic was a weakness, like a disease that ate away at her control and one day, she would succumb to its horrors. It was why they needed the templars.   
  
They were taught that each mage had something inside them: a potential for destruction that could, if allowed, tear down the tower (even if they never used those words, exactly, she knew them well enough).  That potential was the freedom that they both wanted, and feared.  And like any apprentice, Teza went through her life and her lessons with a very healthy dose of fear.  Fear that she might succumb to the magic, fear that it might be taken away completely.  The templars were a mage’s protection against the world and against something far more dangerous: themselves.   
  
In truth she knew that in the tower, a place with so much magic... possibly everything was stronger than a templar - even with so many templars residing with them in the tower - though it was wrong to believe so.     
  
So it was at first and Teza thought it was all in her head; Ser Cullen was not following her more often than before, only that her new awareness of him made it seem so.  But if she counted, or tried to, the hours of the day he was nearby - within a moment’s glance -  she knew it had increased.  He was nearly always within the corners of her perception.   
  
On her way to lessons, if she passed him in the hall she started to greet him.  “Good morning, Ser Cullen.”    
  
And he nodded in return and said, “Good morning, Apprentice.”  Later it became, “Good morning, Apprentice Teza.”  Then just, “Good morning, Teza.”   
  
She never forgot to say Ser when she addressed him, she remembered respect and manners and fear, even when a curl threatened over his temple, or his blue eyes sparkled.  The armor, the flaming sword was branded in her mind like a sunburst and she could not forget what he stood for.  Even if his smile made her want to.  As if with each one he told her that she could trust him.  Coupled with a smile, was the sound of her name on his lips, and that sound would stay with her through the day.  It was like her mind was on a loop that contained nothing but his voice:  _good morning, Teza; good afternoon, Teza; good evening, Teza_ .   A nod and a smile and her name .   
  
In the chapel it became, “Maker’s blessings on you, Teza.”     
  
When he said that, when he sat on the other end of a pew from her and bowed his head and she could see the sincerity in his smile, she believed it just a little.  She had never felt blessed - cursed was more like it - but the way he said those words, it sounded like he meant them.  Yet she was surprised each time to find when she heard them, whispered quietly before or after sermons and at prayers between classes or when Jowan was elsewhere studying, that she felt her chest swell with pride.  It was hard to place Pride, when she’d had so little use for it before, but she found it in the idea Cullen might believe the Maker had, or would, bless her.   
  
After a month of quiet greetings she found she wanted to know if he believed it too.  So on a quiet afternoon when few other apprentices or templars or enchanters were around, she asked.   
  
“Why do you say that, Ser?”   
  
“What?”  Surprise was written into the lines of his face, his eyes wide and an eyebrow lifted as he watched her.   
  
“Maker’s blessing,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.   
  
He looked down at his hands in his lap, then lifted one to rub at the back of his neck.  “I... uh.  It’s a greeting, it’s... you know.”   
  
At that she smiled.  Of course she knew the words, it was impossible not to hear them each day, but she didn’t know why he always said them, or why he said them to her.  Teza shook her head, feeling loose strands of her hair catching on the collar of her robes.     
  
“I know.”  She looked away as he glanced up at her, his brows still scrunched together in confusion and uncertainty.  When he put a hand down between them on the pew, she thought he might leave.  That was the opposite of what she wanted, so she continued.     
  
“I... I mean, to me.  Do you...  _Maker-_ ” she had a hard time getting out her words and pressed her lips together willing more to build up behind them.     
  
Cullen shifted, his armor loud in the silent chapel even when muffled against the wooden pew.  When she looked over at him, he was watching her- not _ her _ exactly- more like he was memorizing the way she fit into the space, his attention just beyond the edges of her body.  Teza took a deep breath just to keep seated, instead of running away.  It was the most words they’d ever said to each other, and yet neither of them had really said anything.  She wasn’t even sure she could explain what it was she wanted to know.   
  
He cleared his throat and she almost relaxed at the normalcy of it, as if it was a subtle acknowledgement that he too was nervous to talk to her.  And then he moved again, turning into his seat a little so he was better facing her.  There was still the length of the seat between them, but it felt like it meant something and so she focused on him, letting her jaw relax and finding a word or two ready on her tongue.   
  
“I mean, Ser Cullen, why do you wish the Maker’s blessing on me... on a-”  _mage_ .   On a mage.  The word was there but it was too heavy, too thick and she could not force it out.   
  
“A mage?” he asked.  She listened for an answer in his voice.   
  
While she waited, Teza thought she could feel the end of whatever she felt when he said her name.  What lay beyond was the yawning abyss that crouched outside the tower walls, the darkness that would swallow her up if she ever lost her grip on the solid stones.  It settled in her stomach, deep and leaden and the waited for the disgust that would come next.   
  
But it didn’t come and instead he smiled, and she could see no malice in it.     
  
“Because it’s more than a greeting, it’s our wish that the Maker bless us all, and an acknowledgement that he has already.  Mage, Templar, Human, Elf-” he raised his hand between them, paused and if she could believe it, his smile grew wider as he added with a whisper that belied conspiracy- “Dwarf, I suppose, though I’ve never seen one.”  He tilted his head and it seemed as though he was looking at something in the distance, a memory where stone walls were not.   
  
“Even, an elven mage?” she asked and her voice felt very small as the words left her lips.   
  
He turned so that his gaze found hers and again he nodded, though the curve of his mouth seemed muted and almost sad even though a hint of his previous smile remained.  “Everyone.  Even you, Teza.”


	5. Free to Blaze Forever

She had managed little more than a thank you after his words.     
  
_ Even you, Teza. _   
  
Those words replaced everything else he had said to her before and when she saw him, it was all she could hear in her head, though the shape of his lips did not match those words.   
  
There were weeks between that day and the next time she spoke with Cullen.  Teza couldn’t bring herself to say anything to him it those weeks, though there were many days her mouth opened and closed and he stood near enough that if she’d had the words, there was opportunity.  But, nothing came from her mouth, no sounds or words to explanation why the things he’d said meant so much to her.   
  
When he’d said her name, it felt like having magic didn’t mean she was lesser.  That it wasn’t wrong for her to exist, that maybe there was a place in the world other than the tower that she belonged.  It seemed that her life was determined to be one where no one wanted her: as a child, as an elf, as a mage.  No one before, not Jeanne, not Jowan, not First Enchanter Irving, had ever really created something in her that made her feel like it was okay she took up space in the world.  Even if it was a small space, behind stone walls and hidden away from most everyone.    
  
The recognition that Cullen, a stoic beacon in the periphery of her vision, believed there was a space in the world that the Maker had created just for her... was a heavier weight on her shoulders than the blue sky outside that she would never reach.     
  
When they spoke again, it was the same pew in the same row of the chapel.  This time Teza’s mouth opened and closed and when she took a deep breath, words stumbled through her lips.   
  
“Ser Cullen... do you remember what you said?  Even me?”  Teza raised her hand in a vague gesture and then folded both hands in her lap.  She looked down at them and her voice got quiet.  “How the Maker blesses us?”   
  
Cullen nodded and shifted in his seat, the little space between them disappearing with what seemed like such a small movement.  He looked around the chapel and Teza looked up long enough to feel a flush of warmth in cheeks.  There was a young apprentice in the far corner, but he paid them no attention at all.  Cullen put a hand on the bench between them, the only space they had left to breathe.   
  
“Yes?” he asked, with an earnestness in his voice as his blue eyes searched her, ignoring the apprentice in the distance.     
  
She wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say.  For a moment she just looked down at his hand, imagining that she could put her hand on his and that by doing so she could convey what her words might not.  Even the one apprentice was too many to risk the movement to do so.  So she leaned a little closer, her shoulder brushing the cold metal on his arm.    
  
After a long moment where she felt frozen through the very heart with the feeling through her sleeve, she whispered, “Thank you... for saying so.”   
  
He couldn’t hide his surprise and his eyes too went to his hand between them and then there was a slight touch against her leg. His pinky slid just along the fabric of her robe, and then it was gone as though she’d imagined it.   
  
She leaned away so her shoulder was free of the pang of cold against her arm.  Teza could breathe again with the space between them, but the warmth that returned caused her heart to beat faster.  His touch kindled a fire, stoked once, wild and free to blaze forever.  But the truth came in the next moment as Cullen stood, once more a Templar: proper and stoic. The light and care gone from his face as if snuffed out.  They looked at each other, both quiet and umoving and Teza wondered if she’d been wrong all along.  There was no sympathy, no friendship between them and could not be, not between a templar and a mage.  Cullen gave her a perfunctory nod and with the heavy measured steps of an armoured templar on patrol, he left the chapel.   
  
When she looked at Cullen in the times that followed, she felt a yawning pit in her stomach where happiness had briefly lived.  There were times when she felt the weight of his gaze on her skin, but when she met his eyes, there was only sadness in them and the painful relief of what could’ve been- had not.     
  
Teza didn’t tell Jowan what happened, because there was nothing much to say, and she could hear the words as clearly as if he had said them.     
  
_ It’s for the best, Teza. _   
  
She told herself the same thing, and in her voice or Jowan’s, she knew it was true.  But, like the windows in the tower, or the rain against the stone, she collected all the possibilities and they scratched at the inside her mind- things that needed her concentration.  As with her magic, she lost control far too often.     
  
Strangely, it was Jeanne she finally confided in. Jeanne recognized the emptiness in her and sought to comfort her.  When she talked about it, she didn’t use his name, or say he was a templar.  Only that someone had made her feel like she mattered, like she was not just a mage and that being one was something good.  And then there was not.     
  
Jeanne understood.  Like they had as children, she and Teza spent long hours in Jeanne’s bed, heads and feet at opposite ends.  Except now, they each took up a side of the bed on their own, and in the middle, they pressed fingertips together instead of toes.  For a while it was as though the space between them disappeared.  For months after Cullen had gone quiet, Teza and Jeanne were once more they were stitched together by understanding.     
  
And then, two days after Jeanne’s seventeenth nameday, she was gone.  Taken in the middle of the night... and not returned.  


End file.
